“Your Instagram?” That snaps me out of my thoughts. “Have you checked it?”

“Not yet.” There’s a hole in my stomach, growing bigger and bigger with every passing second. “Have you? Is it bad? Don’t tell me.”

Priti pulls out her phone as soon as we’ve boarded the bus and made it through the throngs of people and into a corner. She thrusts the screen in front of my face.

523 likes. 97 comments.

“It’s not quite viral. But it’s proven to be pretty popular among the people from school.”

“We don’t even have five hundred people at school.” Clearly the wrong thing to say because Priti groans.

“Of course we have five hundred people at school,” she says. “I can’t believe how bad you are at math.”

I scroll through the comments. Each of them makes my heart beat faster and faster.

Omg, when are you starting up?

How much will it cost for one tattoo?

What other designs do you have?

So excited!

So pretty!

Love it!!!

I feel elated. Or … I feel like I should feel elated. This is what I wanted. I’ve been anticipating this moment since Priti opened up the Instagram account last night. But with Ammu’s stony silence in the back of my mind, all I can feel is that hole in my heart getting bigger and bigger. I keep scrolling through the comments, reading them over and over and over again, hoping that they’ll somehow fill it.

My fingers brush against the top of the screen and before I know it I’m on Priti’s Instagram feed. And then I see a photo that makes my heart stop.

Priti snatches the phone out of my hand before I can stare for too long. She knows me too well. She must have recognized the look on my face.

“Holy shit.” Her voice is low, but still one of the ladies beside us shoots her a glare that she doesn’t even notice. “I can’t believe her.”

Priti puts her hand on my shoulder, a calming presence that I can barely feel for once. “Apujan,” she says. “It’s not a big deal. She doesn’t even have as many likes as you.”

“It’s nicer. So much nicer.”

“That’s just … she’s used to it, you know. She’s probably been taking pictures of her art for ages. She has hundreds of posts. She has a bigger following than you.” Priti’s voice is gentle and soothing but it doesn’t make me feel better in the slightest. Whatever happiness I’d talked myself into feeling is gone. Disappeared into thin air.

“She’s going to do better than me,” I say. “She already has a customer base and I have nothing.”

“It’s not a competition,” Priti says.

“That’s literally exactly what it is! A competition!”

“Yes, but—”

“And she’s going to win.”

“But is winning really that important?”